Horizontal Jumps: Diamond Race 2016

There was some superb sandpit action in the 2016 Diamond Race. We take a look back at how the triple jump and long jump competitions unfolded over the summer.

Long Jump

Ivana Spanovic became the first Serbian athlete to win the Diamond Race in any discipline as she rampaged through a near perfect season on the IAAF Diamond League circuit. After picking up 16 points from the opening two meetings, Spanovic proceeded to win four rounds back-to-back in the middle of the season, claiming maximum points at Oslo, Stockholm, Lausanne and Paris. Though she finished second at the final in Zürich, overall victory was never in doubt, and she took a first Diamond Trophy back to Serbia.

In the men's long jump, Fabrice Lapierre achieved the rare feat of winning the Diamond Race without having won a single meeting. In a field which remained astonishingly open throughout the meeting, Lapierre made it onto the podium and gathered points at six of the seven meetings. Ahead of the Brussels final, he was level on points with Xinglong Gao, and finished two places higher than him at the Memorial van Damme to claim the Diamond Trophy.

Triple Jump

Caterine Ibargüen ended her 34-strong winning streak in Birmingham this year, finishing second to Olga Rypakova. That tiny hiccup had no bearing on what was yet another dominant season for the Colombian legend, however, who won every other round to storm to yet another Diamond Trophy: her fourth in a row.